Nocturne
by Kilroy Wassier
Summary: Max and Logan investigate the disappearance of a journalist.
1. Default Chapter

TITLE: Nocturne  
AUTHOR: Kilroy Wassier   
DISCLAIMER: They're not mine, I swear.  
SPOILERS: Up through "Shorties in Love."   
RATING: T  
CLASSIFICATION: Mystery/Drama/Suspense   
SUMMARY: Max and Logan investigate the disappearance of a journalist.  
AUTHOR'S NOTE: For the one whose words are truly as light and delicate as the first rays of morning sun on the pale, unfolding leaves of a tiny spring flower.

* * *

It was the dawn of a new day, but the sky was still as black as the soil of a productive Iowa farm, dark and cold and seductively clingy. It was as dark as this soil, and as rich -- not with minerals, but with promise. It was the witching hour, and those who knew better had locked themselves behind steel doors, closed the blinds and now sat huddled around flickering candles. Only fools and the very brave wandered the streets alone, and even they could tell that something was wrong. Something dark was stirring; something wicked was on its way. Pedestrians in heavy jackets avoided making eye contact, lest they spy something horrid, lest they exchange a glance with something brought up from hell and in doing so, damn themselves to an eternity of torture and fear. 

The Clarke house lay dormant, waiting. Time had stripped it of its majestic image and it stood alone, now, the last reminder of a grander, gentler time, when displaced Southern belles whirled and Rhett Butler wannabes stood underneath gates of ivy and nudged each other's sides, making rude gestures at the aforementioned ladies. A grander time, indeed, and one that Post-Pulse Seattle had never seen. Clarke House alone testified to that period, that glorious era, and Clarke House had been abandoned. No one bothered to paint it once the original coatings began to peel, and no one bothered to water the flowers in the garden, nor weed out those dark brothers which sought to smother the life from their more aesthetically pleasing companions.

Indeed, on this particular night, as on all nights, Clarke House was empty. No footsteps hurried down the stairs, no glasses clinked in the kitchen, and no music came from the ballroom, such as it was. No servants prepared the next day's meal, no masters snored as they blessedly slept, no mistresses climbed quietly down the once-manicured trellises. The house was safe even from the dirty hands of thieving looters and their less scandalous peers, those damned squatters, for not even criminals would dare enter through those cursed doors. No one had dared enter Clarke House for as long as the oldest man among us can recall; even those who only crossed the rotting wood of the front porch ran fleeing from the estate, shivering and telling of a dark, dark feeling that grew from deep down in their moralistic bellies. They were, they were quick to explain, only going to knock on the door to see if the occupants of the house wanted to purchase some cookies to support a good cause, and after just a few seconds, they knew -- they just knew -- that the house was up to no good.

But on this particular night, unlike other nights, something was about to happen. The woods surrounding the house grew silent, as if those small animals residing within were holding their collective breath, balancing precariously on the edges of their metaphorical seats. The woods grew silent, as if the animals knew, as if that fabled sixth sense extended not only to earthquakes, but to incidences of pure evil as well.

In the distance, a ghostly galleon crashed upon cloudy seas.

All was silent.

In the distance, a belligerent fool shouted, "Shut up already! Shut up, damn it!" as if perhaps he thought he could stop the rising evil, freeze it in its path, or as if he was only unaware of his proximity to said evil. (At any rate, it didn't work.)

From within the house, a cat cried softly.

It was joined by one.

And then another.

And then... another.

Slowly, slowly, the front door of Clarke House opened, revealing to and unleashing upon the unsuspecting world the horror that lurks within the very soul of humanity, the darkness lying dormant, a hideous creation, a fate worse than death.

Something slithered out, and then the front door of Clarke House closed.

All was silent again.

* * *

Max Guevara, who took her surname not from the famed revolutionary figure as most people usually assumed, but from the lesser-known but equally important illustrator of children's books, the venerable Ms Susan, arrived at Logan Cale's penthouse in mid-afternoon, as rain streamed against the windows and bombarded the street below. She shook water from her hair and crossed her arms, leaning against the wall. "You called," she informed him. 

He looked away from his computer screen, reached for a file and handed it to her. "Yeah. I could use your help on something, if you're free."

"I'm always up for a round of B&E."

"How 'bout rescuing a missing journalist?" he asked. She frowned and opened the file folder, her eyes widening as she skimmed the first pages. She turned the next page, and then the next, and then looked up at him.

"The Cat-People of Bluecourtia?" she asked. "You're kidding."

He smiled tiredly, raising his eyebrows in agreement. "Unfortunately, no."

She slapped the folder shut and handed it back to him. "You're investigating a bad sci-fi feature?"

He sighed. "Sci-fi or not, a journalist is missing."

She nodded, speaking slowly as though talking to a very small child or someone with a history of mental instability. "And you think the cat people got her."

"Not necessarily. That's why I'm investigating," he said, ignoring her tone.

She smiled, sauntering over to his desk and leaning one hip against the edge. He tried not to notice the water dripping down her face and onto the pages strewn across his desk. Probably no one would mind if they were a bit water-stained, after all, and certainly the vision of dark-haired beauty before him was worth a few reprints. "Cat people. If I had that much free time..." She shrugged, looking down at him.

He put on his best strictly-business face and did his best to look stern. Were they any other couple, they'd be having a decent shag right about then, he thought. But no, no... due to the divine timing of his heroic action, any love between them was doomed to be purely intellectual, an exercise of the minds alone. "Is that a yes?"

She grinned. "I guess. What's in it for me?"

"Besides cat people?"

She raised an eyebrow and he resisted the urge to ask if she thought she'd find any long-lost relatives. "Dinner?" he offered instead.

"Deal." She glanced down at her watch. "I gotta get back before Normal blows a fuse or something."

"See you later?"

"After work." She nodded and he watched as she sauntered towards the door. He waited until he heard the door actually latch before returning to work; the last time she'd snuck up on him, he'd spilled coffee and ruined a perfectly good sweater. Not to mention how embarrassed he'd be if she caught him writing poetry again. He sighed. Not only were a great deal of his notes now waterlogged, he still hadn't come up with a good rhyme for "voluptuous."

A crime-fighter's job is never easy, he thought. Perhaps if he went with "curved," instead...

* * *

TBC 


	2. Chapter Two

Hi, guys! This is my first DA fic, so I'm glad you all liked it! I hope you like this chapter, too!

* * *

The rain beat down, hard, hard, upon the gloomy city of Seattle, as though attempting to punish the citizens for their sins. Had it ever rained this hard before, Max wondered. Two people had died from the resulting floods not a month before, but the eminent Eyes Only hadn't thought to investigate that, she thought. He hadn't even attended the funerals, though she couldn't really complain, as she hadn't, either. If only he would choose one way or another, she thought; if only he would make up his mind. How was she to know how to proceed if he kept waffling between selfless, heroic martyr and playful yet sophisticated playboy? One of these days, she thought, she was just going to get tired of waiting and move on to someone else. Like Zack, who was quite nice-looking if one overlooked the slight incest factor. 

"Whit's this greetin' aboot?" Original Cindy asked. Max turned around to see her friend approaching. Normal glared at them from across the room, his eyes dark and angry as lasers as if to warn them that each minute they spent speaking would be deducted from their bi-monthly paychecks. "Trouble wiv' yer pan?"

"He's not my man!" Max said. "And things between us are fine."

"Which is why ye're lookin' so sorry," Original Cindy said knowingly.

"I'm not looking sorry," Max protested. "I'm just thinking."

Her friend looked concerned. "Aboot whit?"

"The weather."

"The pleasure? Why'd ye wanna think aboot that, boo?" Original Cindy shook her head. "Nae, I dinna think it's the rain a'tall."

Normal interrupted before Max was forced to think of an appropriately distracting demurral. "I've got a package here with your name on it, missy!" Max feigned a regretful expression and hurriedly walked over to the dispatch center. She loved Original Cindy, she really did (in a completely platonic way, that is. Despite Original Cindy's sexual orientation and relative availability, Max felt no attraction to her friend; the magnetic, lavalike tide of her lust was directed at the mysterious man of mystery, he who always kept her guessing), but sometimes, her friend's concern about her relationship with Logan was just too much to take.

Normal handed her the package, glaring especially angrily as if to express his anger at her having taken a few minutes to converse with Original Cindy. The rain drummed heavily on the roof; combined with Normal's angry look, Jam Pony's atmosphere felt... wrong. Max frowned. Surely that was just emotion, just sentimentality. She was used to the rain, and used to Normal's angry look, and certainly they'd been combined before, so what was wrong with today?

Across the room, a female messenger screamed in pure terror. "Oh my God!" Max whirled to see what was wrong, to see which one of her peers had gotten his hand stuck in the vending machine today. Sketchy, she thought. What a surprise.

Except... Sketchy wasn't standing near the vending machine. Indeed, that ancient soda-dispensing monolith was abandoned. Why was Bella staring at him like that, then? Max's eyes widened as Sketchy turned around slowly to face her...

Or at least, his head did. Because Sketchy's body was still facing Bella.

"Something wicked," Sketchy said in a voice like the buzzing of a thousand insects, the soft clicking of a thousand flesh-hungry beetles, like the cry of a vulture circling over its dying meal. "Bast shall be avenged!"

Bast. Something clicked in Max's mind. What had she said to Logan on that fateful day, the day upon which she'd broken into his apartment and stolen a statue of...

Bast!

Could this be related, she wondered? Was it possible that Sketchy was possessed by the vengeful spirit of the sculptor of that statue?

"'The power of Christ compels you,'" Normal said, sounding annoyed. He waved his hands in the air in exasperation. "You'd better hope your neck twists back, because I'm not insured against that kind of claim."

Sketchy pitched forward abruptly and Max rushed to his side, careful to stay a safe distance away. His head was on right, she saw, and she looked up to see all of the other messengers staring at her fallen comrade. They'd seen it, too, she knew; it hadn't just been in her head. She stood up slowly, backing away as one of the more medically-trained messengers took her place at Sketchy's pain-ridden side.

What did it mean, she wondered? And did it have anything to do with Logan's recent obsession with cat people? Or were they two completely unrelated coincidences? Could it be, she wondered. Could it be...?

No, these were too obviously related to be coincidences. They had to mean something. They had to, lest Sketchy's pain be for naught. It couldn't be, she thought. There had been too much pain lately. Too much pain. First Logan, trying to kill himself because he felt that he was not fully human, and then Ben, dead by her own hands due to his delusions. She couldn't stand another, not even if it were Sketchy.

Not even then.

She swallowed, feeling tears forming at the corners of her eyes, and hastily looked away so that Original Cindy would not think she was genuinely mourning the fallen messenger. She'd never live that one down, she was certain. And what would happen if Logan found out, if he thought that she'd moved on? What if he went back to his tartish wife and left her all alone?

All alone. She could not stand that. Not again. She looked bravely up, feeling the tears sliding back into their ducts. She was strong. She was... woman. Strong, proud, and female, she thought. Like on the shirt she'd seen once, on a woman down in the market, surrounded by screaming children and still standing strong. Girls kick ass, she thought, and you go, girl! She remembered thinking at the time that perhaps the shirt had referred to child-rearing methods, but she'd decided that she was probably wrong. No woman, not even one as tired as the shirt-wearer, would spank her children.

She turned from the scene and wheeled her bike out into the rain. She had a job to do. The sooner she finished this, the sooner she could visit Logan again, and the sooner they would get to the bottom of this cat-people thing. The sooner they finished that, she thought, the sooner they could do more important things.

Behind her, a siren wailed. The ambulance was coming for Sketchy, one more casualty of the dangers with which Post-Pulse Seattle life was wrought.

* * *

TBC 


End file.
